Following its most-watched season in 2024, the WNBA entered the 2025 season last month with a record-setting roster of 45 sponsors. Five brands, including Ally, Booking.com, and Coach are newcomers to the WNBA.
Thanks in part to emergent leagues like the WNBA, sports sponsorships are more popular than ever. According to Forrester’s Q4 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2024, 39% of respondents plan to increase their investment in large-scale sports sponsorships this year, while another 28% plan to enter the space for the very first time.
But just over three-quarters (76%) of US B2C marketing executives who invested in sports sponsorships in 2024 agree or strongly agree that they struggle to calculate the ROI of their sports sponsorships.
Maximizing The Value Of Sports Sponsorships Is Resource-Intensive
CMOs that make the most of their big-ticket sports sponsorships start first with a strong brand, audience, and market alignment. Next, they build a flexible and collaborative partnership with the sports property from the get go. Then, it all comes down to the quality and amplification potential of the sponsorship’s activation(s).
For example, take what happened at last month’s Formula 1 drivers’ parade: F1 drivers got behind the wheel of life-sized, drivable LEGO cars — each built from nearly 400,000 LEGO bricks to promote LEGO’s Formula 1 product line. This activation at the Miami Grand Prix kicked off a global tour across F1 races.
Introducing Forrester’s Sports Sponsorships Research Collection
We just published three interconnected sports sponsorship reports chock-full of best practices, data, examples, and frameworks/templates:
Maximize The Value Of Your Sports Sponsorships. This report lays out 12 best practices to help make the most of your sports sponsorships — from selecting them to renewing them and everything in between. [READ REPORT]
Case Study: AARP Builds Brand Relevance By Sponsoring The APP Tour. This case study describes how AARP’s sports sponsorship helped shift the organization’s brand perception with a limited budget. [READ CASE STUDY]
The Sports Sponsorship Activation Framework. This downloadable template helps identify tactics to activate before, during, and after a sponsored sports event to extend its reach using expanded storytelling. [DOWNLOAD TEMPLATE]
Learn More About AARP’s Sports Sponsorship
Attending CX Summit North America? Join my sports sponsorship panel, featuring AARP and the Association of Pickleball Players (APP) on Wednesday, June 25 at 2:25 p.m. CDT (in the Marketplace). We’ll go behind the scenes of that particular sports sponsorship, diving deeper into the case study report.
Speaking of pickleball … Be sure to stick around right after the panel, as we’ll head a few steps over to the onsite pickleball court to teach you how to play!
Forrester clients: Let’s chat more about your sports sponsorship strategy via a Forrester guidance session or on the pickleball court at CX Summit North America.
